Workplace law protections split groups

By Ed Logue and Genevieve Gannon

New federal anti-discrimination laws need a provision to stop bosses from sacking domestic violence victims because of aggressive acts by a partner or family member, a Senate committee has been told.

Anna Davis, a co-ordinator of the Northern Territory Working Women's Centre, asked the senators to consider the case of "Mary", who lost her job after her former partner turned up at her workplace.

"We believe the law is currently failing women like Mary," Ms Davis told the committee hearing in Melbourne on Wednesday.

Having protections enshrined in law would help deter employers from terminating the jobs of such vulnerable workers, she said at the committee's first public hearing on the government's draft of the Human Rights and Anti-Discrimination Bill 2012.

Victims of family violence - mostly women - were also being turned away from housing because of the actions of violent partners or ex-partners, the committee was told.

The Human Rights Law Centre and the Public Interest Law Clearing House (PILCH) have welcomed the draft legislation, which aims to consolidate five existing statutes covering age, disability, race, sex and other forms of discrimination into a single statute.

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But the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry said it did not achieve its first aim of rolling existing laws into one and would be a burden for business.

"It is a misnomer to characterise the current exposure draft as consolidating existing statutes," ACCI's director of workplace policy and legal affairs Daniel Mammone told the committee.

He said the changes would increase costs for firms who had to update their policies and retrain staff.

The committee received 590 submissions on the draft legislation, which is intended to consolidate and simplify the laws.

The Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) says in its submission the bill represented a "dramatic and radical attack" on Australians' fundamental human rights.

"The draft bill would politicise and regulate private interpersonal relationships in a way they never have been in Australia," the think tank said.

Shadow attorney-general George Brandis was concerned it wasn't an anti-discrimination law but was packaged as one.

"It overreaches ... it is really a law against controversy," he told the hearing.

Australian Industry Group chief executive, Innes Willox, said real discrimination had to be removed from workplaces but a "competition of ideas" had to be encouraged.

"The last thing employers need is for legitimate internal debate to be stilted and sterilised and replaced by fear of complaint and political correctness coming to the fore," Mr Willox said in an opinion piece in The Australian on Wednesday.